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The Road Ahead

Hello, all.

It’s been a little while since you heard much from me. August was our launch month, and kept us quite busy with post-launch support (patching, mainly). Most of the team took September off to rest up, apart from a contingent who worked on some platform support tasks, and now most of the team is back at work and it’s time to fill you in on our plans for The Long Dark, moving forward.

While there were a lot of things to celebrate about our 1.0 launch, one thing it showed us was how 100+ updates to The Long Dark while in Early Access and on Game Preview, didn’t fully prepare us for the challenges of a full 1.0 launch on multiple platforms (including two consoles). Launching a game “for real” involves a lot of extra steps as compared to releasing an update, and while we understood this intellectually, it was only in the last few months of the project that we fully comprehended the scope of the challenge we’d taken on for ourselves. I think that in many ways, we bit off quite a bit more than our small team could handle, and that showed in the first couple of weeks of our launch. As you might recall from my last devblog post, I wasn’t very happy with the state of the game we launched and while we’ve been able to address most of the launch issues, we can’t erase any good-will we lost from the community due to the imperfect launch. This weighs heavily on my mind, as we move forward.

In order to avoid this situation in the future, we’re building up an internal platform and publishing team that will focus on all aspects of getting the game into your hands, including testing, localization, certification, and the promotion and marketing of our updates and future content work. While we’re still sorting out the structure and needs of this team, we’ve already made the first steps towards this plan, and I believe that this approach will help ensure our future launches are as smooth as they should be. This is just the “cost” of self-publishing games, when you are an independent studio.

In terms of the game itself — although our plans for Episodes One and Two were always that they be introductory to both gameplay and worldbuilding, our approach to releasing an open-world game in episodic format was always very experimental. Having been able to better gauge response to this approach, we can see that many of you didn’t like the more constrained approach we took with our Story mode, compared to the free-form, self-directed openness of Survival Mode. Development of The Long Dark has always been iterative, and we see no reason why this approach shouldn’t also apply to helping us make better and better episode content.

While we’re still committed to our episodic structure — as it lends itself well to certain storytelling conceits (ex. playing two different protagonists) and certain production methodologies (ex. we can continue to build the game and world in incremental steps, which means we can remain a small studio) — I think we need to bring our narrative mode more in line with the core experience of Survival Mode. This means, a new approach to how we present story and characters, more variation in our mission type and structure, and more freedom in how you can overcome the various obstacles we throw in your way. This increased freedom means we have to revisit some of the tools and tech we set up for Episodes One and Two, and we also need to rethink our approach to how we create mission content, and how you experience it.

I’d also like to fix some of the areas of criticism in Episodes one and Two, relating to how experienced players found the opening sections of Episode One to be too much of a tutorial, the linearity of missions, the lack of full voice acting in our dialogue sequences, and the over dependence on “fetch” quests. While the fundamental building blocks of The Long Dark’s gameplay do depend on acquiring resources, and those resources take on new meaning in a world where you have to think about people other than yourself, we realize that for some of you, the lack of choice in when and how you approached certain missions detracted from the freedom you expect to find in our game. It’s never good when a game sets certain expectations in one mode, that aren’t fully paid off in another, particularly if players don’t understand this. Although we tried to educate our players around how our Story mode content would differ from Survival mode, it’s impossible to reach everyone, and certainly many players came into the episodes with certain expectations that we just didn’t meet.

I’m not yet fully sure how we will do all these things, but my aim for The Long Dark is to ensure that by the time we launch Episode Three, not only is that Episode a much stronger expression of The Long Dark as a narrative survival experience, but that Episodes One and Two have also been substantially improved.

All of this is going to take a lot of work, so I don’t want to set the expectation that it will happen quickly. We won’t be launching Episode Three this year. We won’t announce a launch date until it’s ready to go.

In the meantime, as we had to put Survival Mode aside while we finished Episode work for launch, we now want to get back to it. We’re working on a big Survival Mode update to launch some time in December. This update will add a few things we know you’re waiting for — for example, Milton as a Survival Mode region, the Moose — as well as a few things you may not be expecting. We’ll share more about the December update as we get closer to launching it. It’ll be a pretty substantial update to Survival mode. I’d also like to try to find a way to balance our resources so that we can get you more frequent Survival Mode updates in the future — it’ll likely mean smaller updates that come more regularly.

With Hallowe’en around the corner, there have been a lot of questions about if we’ll reprise last year’s “4 Days of Night” event. We’re worried about 4DON interfering with other work we’re doing in the game right now, so we *are* going to run the 4 Days of Night event again, but it’ll be in a separate branch of the game. This way, we can roll it out without it derailing our December update. Unfortunately, there’s no way for us to run multiple branches of the game on Xbox or PS4, so this will be a Steam-only event. But we think “live” events could be a fun way to create some shared experiences for you, so we’ll be investigating ways we can support more of these types of community events — across all our platforms — in the future.

I’ll also do my best to publish a devblog update more frequently moving forward, to keep you in the loop about what the team’s working on. Thanks for your ongoing support!

– Raphael

The Long Dark hotfixed to v1.15 (32683) on STEAM

V1.15 has now been re-released. Thanks again to everyone for your patience while we fixed these bugs!

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FYI: We've since rolled back this hotfix due to the UI bug noted below - the current Steam version is v1.14, until we re-release the hotfix. Thanks for your understanding.

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***NOTE: We're aware of a new issue with Mouse UI interactions when performing some menu actions, such as Harvesting or Cooking/Boiling Water/Adding Fuel. You can still navigate the menus using WASD and Enter, or with a Controller. And Mouse inputs can still be used to change between Fuel/Food/Water, for example. ***
Thanks for your patience as we work to resolve this issue.

*We'll have hotfixes up for additional platforms, as they become ready for release.*

* Fixed issue with not being able to ascend rope in Broken Railroad region
* Fixed collision issue in Dam that could cause player to fall out of the world.
* Fixed issuse with gamepad and Start Fire UI

### END OF PATCH NOTES ###

We're continuing to fix additional issues as quickly as we can. Thank you for your patience.

- The Hinterland Team

Hello Community,

Our latest Dev Diary is now live. In it we take a look at our launch and what's in store for The Long Dark going forward. 

http://www.thelongdark.com/news/dev-diary-september-2017/

Please also note the information at the bottom of the post regarding studio and community activity during the month of September.

Thank you!

- Hinterland Team

Hello all,
We've released the soundtrack for Survival Mode and Episodes One and Two of The Long Dark.

Find it on Steam as DLC for the game, or

Get the Soundtrack on Bandcamp.

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Original score for The Long Dark. Music for The Long Dark - Volume One, features 100 minutes of music composed by Cris Velasco (Mass Effect, God of War, Overwatch, Resident Evil 7, etc.) and Sascha Dikiciyan (Borderlands, Quake III, Mass Effect).
Volume One includes the entire soundtrack for WINTERMUTE Episode One: "Do Not Go Gentle", and Episode Two: "Luminance Fugue", as well as all the ambient exploration music from Survival Mode.

Total Volume One Run Time: 100 minutes (1 hour, 40 minutes)

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The direct link to the Soundtrack's Steam Store page is here:  
http://store.steampowered.com/app/690180/Music_for_The_Long_Dark__Volume_One

The direct link to the Soundtrack on Bandcamp is
https://hinterlandstudio.bandcamp.com/album/music-for-the-long-dark-volume-one

We hope you enjoy it!

- The Hinterland Team

Steam Updates The Long Dark to v1.12 (32503)

PS4 Updates The Long Dark to v.1.12 (32503)

WARNING: There may be story spoilers in these notes.

PS4 Specific

* Fixed flickering on intro movie.

General

* Fixed issue preventing "Lake Gunshots" mission from completing correctly.
* General cinematics polish.
* Clarified Survival School "Harvestable Plants" mission requires adding plants to crate outside Jeremiah's cabin.
* Fixed issues with Distress Pistol animation.
* General memory optimizations.
* Fixed issue where storage container in Lodge appeared to be interactive when it was not.
* Fixed issue where duplicate Trust option appeared for Grey Mother.
* Fixed issue where Torch Blueprint would not unlock correctly when starting a fresh Episode Two game.
* Fixed issue where players could return to Milton after completing Episode One.

### END OF PATCH NOTES ###

We're continuing to fix additional issues as quickly as we can. Thank you for your patience.

- The Hinterland Team

We're thrilled to announce we've just released Trading Cards for The Long Dark on Steam. 

For more information about Trading Cards and how they work, go here: https://steamcommunity.com/tradingcards

Have fun!

- The Hinterland Team

XBOX ONE PATCH 3 - Updates The Long Dark to version 1.10 (32415)

WARNING: There may be Story spoilers in these notes.

* Fixed issue with Jeremiah's Flare Cache not spawning correctly. This fixes a blocker in getting the Supply Caches achievement.
* Fixed several small typos in various Trust dialogues.
* Memory optimizations.
* Fixed issue where Survival music could occasionally be heard in a story episode.
* Fixed issue where Jeremiah would be inanimate after completing the Bear Hunt mission.
* Fixed issue where the Snow Shelter would not unlock properly after completing the relevant Trust unlock.
* Fixed issue where Methuselah cinematic might not play in Renewed Hope mission.
* Fixed issue where Rifle could end up in a broken state when reloading during a door transition.
* Fixed issue in Survival Mode where the female survivor voice sometimes plays when playing as the male survivor.
* Fixed issue with a series of multiple exertion sounds being played after a Bear struggle.

### END OF PATCH NOTES ###

We're continuing to fix additional issues as quickly as we can. Thank you for your patience.

- The Hinterland Team

For additional information, check out this story at the Hollywood Reporter: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/resident-evil-producer-developing-long-dark-film-1025426

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NOTE: Warnings, bans, and lifetime bans are all at the discretion of Hinterland depending on the seriousness of the infraction.
 

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Starting July 18, you can save 20% off the launch price when you pre-order The Long Dark on PS4!

You can find us right now on the PlayStation Store here, as well as through the PlayStation store app on your console. Currently, pre-orders are available in most of North and South America. Check the PlayStation Store page to see if it’s available in your territory.

We hope you check us out and join us in the Quiet Apocalypse!

– Hinterland Team

RATINGS & LAUNCH DATE(S)

Hello intrepid survivors,

With our launch around the corner, we wanted to update you on the ratings we’ve received and how that impacts our launch timings.

We’ve been navigating the lengthy ratings submission process with the various government ratings boards, and here’s where things currently stand:

THE AMERICAS
For ESRB, which covers North, Central, and South America, we have been issued a “T” rating, which means anyone 13 or over can purchase and play the game.

GERMANY
For USK, which covers Germany, we have been issued a “12” rating, which means anyone 12 or over can purchase and play the game.

EUROPE & RUSSIA
For PEGI, which covers all of Europe, and also Russia, we have been issued a “16” rating, which means you have to be 16 or older to purchase and play the game.

This PEGI-16 rating was an unexpected surprise to us, as we had a PEGI-12 rating going into our Certification process with Microsoft and Sony.

Unfortunately, we just received this rating earlier this week and we are now forced to re-submit the game to Sony Europe for approval. As a result, our launch in Europe on PS4 is being delayed until August 8th.

For Xbox One, we will launch in all countries covered by our three current ratings, on August 1st. Additional territories (ex. Australia, New Zealand, etc.) will be made available as soon as we secure ratings and get those versions through Microsoft.

For Steam, we will launch worldwide on August 1st. There is no ratings requirement or certification process on Steam.

We’re really disappointed about the PEGI-16 rating, and we think it’s quite out of line with our other ratings, but this is the rating we’ve been issued. We are currently working with Sony Europe to get the game through their certification process with this new rating, and our goal is to have it in the European PlayStation store by August 8th. We are also working with Sony Europe to secure a launch discount to soften the sting of having to wait an extra week.

IN SUMMARY

• Steam launches worldwide on August 1st.
• Xbox launches worldwide in ESRB, PEGI, and USK territories on August 1st.
• PlayStation 4 launches in ESRB territories on August 1st.
• PlayStation 4 launches in PEGI and USK territories on August 8th.

Apologies to our European PlayStation fans for this unexpected delay. We hope it doesn’t diminish your excitement for the game in any way.

Thanks for reading.

– Raphael

QUICK REFERENCE

STEAM
Launches worldwide on August 1st
No ratings required

XBOX (Canada, United States, Mexico)
Launches August 1st
ESRB Rating: T

XBOX (Europe, Russia)
Launches August 1st
USK Rating: 12
PEGI Rating: 16

XBOX (Australia, New Zealand)
Launches August 8th (tentative)
Not Yet Rated

PLAYSTATION 4 (Canada, United States, Mexico and whatever else the ESRB applies to)
Launches August 1st
ESRB Rating: T

PLAYSTATION 4 (Europe)
Launches August 8th (tentative)
USK Rating: 12
PEGI Rating: 16